Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T04:20:44.617Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Transmission and diffusion: Linguistic change in the regional French of Béarn

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2015

DAMIEN MOONEY
DAMIEN MOONEY*
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
*
Address for correspondence: Department of French, School of Modern Languages, University of Bristol, Clifton, Bristol, BS8 1UP, UK e-mail: mooneyda@tcd.ie
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines the seemingly dichotomous linguistic processes of transmission and diffusion (Labov, 2007) in the regional variety of French spoken in Béarn, southwestern France. Using a sociophonetic apparent time methodology, an analysis of nasal vowel quality provides evidence for the advancement of linguistic changes from below taking place between successive generations during the transmission process, as well as for change from above taking place in the variety as a result of exposure to diffusing non-local varieties of French. The results address Labov's (2007) assertion that it is rare to investigate incremental changes occurring from below in European dialectological studies and shed light on the transmission–diffusion interface by showing the adoption of an individual change from above to instigate a faithfully-transmitted counterclockwise chain shift in the regional French nasal vowel system.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of French Language Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , November 2016 , pp. 327 - 352
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Armstrong, N. and Pooley, T. (2010). Social and Linguistic Change in European French. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnaud, V. (2006). La dimension variationniste du français en usage à Saint-Claude (Haut-Jura): une étude acoustique des voyelles orales des ‘gens d'en haut’. Doctoral thesis, Université Laval (Québec) and Université de Franche-Comté (France).Google Scholar
Auer, P. and Hinskens, F. (1996). The convergence and divergence of dialects in Europe: New and not so new developments in an old area. Sociolinguistica, 10: 1–30.Google Scholar
Bailey, G., Wikle, T., Tillery, J. and Sand, L. (1991). The apparent time construct. Language Variation and Change, 3: 241–264.Google Scholar
Baayen, R.H., Davidson, D.J., and Bates, D.M. (2008). Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language, 59/4, 390–412.Google Scholar
Boersma, P. (2001). Praat: a System for doing Phonetics by Computer. Glot International, 5.9/10: 341–345.Google Scholar
Boersma, P. and Weenink, D. (2012). Praat: doing phonetics by computer. <http://www.praat.org/>[accessed July 2012, Version 5.3.22].[accessed+July+2012,+Version+5.3.22].>Google Scholar
Borrell, A. and Billières, M. (1989). L’Évolution de la norme phonétique en français. La Linguistique, 25: 45–62.Google Scholar
Boughton, Z. (2006). When perception isn't reality: Accent identification and perceptual dialectology in French. Journal of French Language Studies, 16.3: 277–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boughton, Z. (2013). Social class, cluster simplification and following context: Sociolinguistic variation in word-final post-obstruent liquid deletion in French. Journal of French Language Studies, 25.1: 1–21.Google Scholar
Carignan, C. (2011). Oral articulation of nasal vowels in French. In: Lee, W.S. and Zee, E. (eds), Proceedings of the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences XVII. Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong, pp. 408–411.Google Scholar
Carignan, C. (2013). When nasal is more than nasal: the oral articulation of nasals vowels in two dialects of French. Doctoral thesis: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.Google Scholar
Carignan, C., Shosted, R., Fu, M., Liang, Z.-P. and Sutton, B. (2013). The role of the tongue and pharynx in enhancement of vowel nasalization: A real-time MRI investigation of French nasal vowels. Proceedings of INTERSPEECH 2013: 3042–3046.Google Scholar
Carton, F., Rossi, M., Autesserre, P. and Léon, P. (1983). Les accents des Français. Paris: Hachette.Google Scholar
Clopper, C.G. (2011). Checking for reliability. In: Paolo, M. Di and Yaeger-Dror, M. (eds), Sociophonetics: a Student's Guide. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 188–197.Google Scholar
Delais-Roussarie, É. and Durand, J. (2003). Corpus et variation en phonologie du français: méthodes et analyses. Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail.Google Scholar
Delvaux, V. (2009). Perception du contraste de nasalité vocalique en français. Journal of French Language Studies, 19.1: 25–29.Google Scholar
Delvaux, V., Metens, T. and Soquet, A. (2002) French nasal vowels: Acoustic and articulatory properties. Proceedings of the seventh international conference on spoken language processing, 1: 53–56.Google Scholar
Delvaux, V., Demolin, D., Soquet, A. and Kingston, J. (2004). La perception des voyelles nasales du français. XXVèmes Journées d'etude sur la parole, 157–160.Google Scholar
Delvaux, V., Demolin, D., Harmegnies, B. and Soquet, A. (2008). The aerodynamics of nasalization in French. Journal of Phonetics, 36: 576–606.Google Scholar
De Mareüil, P.B., Adda-Decker, M. and Woehrling, C. (2007). Analysis of oral and nasal vowel realisation in northern and southern French varieties. 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 2221–2224.Google Scholar
Drager, K. and Hay, J. (2012). Exploiting random intercepts: Two case studies in sociophonetics. Language Variation and Change, 24.1: 59–78.Google Scholar
Durand, J. (1988). Phénomènes de nasalité en français du midi. Phonologie de dépendance et sous-spécification. Recherches Linguistiques, 17: 29–54.Google Scholar
Durand, J. (2009). Essai de panorama critique des accents du midi. In: Baronian, L. and Martineau, F. (eds), Le français, d'un continent à l'autre: Mélanges offerts à Yves Charles Morin. Quebec: Presses de l'Université Laval, pp. 123–170.Google Scholar
Durand, J. and Eychenne, J. (2011). La phonologie des voyelles nasales: typologie, universaux et acquisition. Journées IPFC & PFC-EF.Google Scholar
Fónagy, I. (1989). Le français change de visage? Revue Romane, 24.2: 232.Google Scholar
Garmadi, J. (1981). La sociolinguistique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar
Giles, H., Taylor, D.M., and Bourhis, R. (1973). Towards a theory of interpersonal accommodation through language: Some Canadian data. Language in Society, 2.2: 177–192.Google Scholar
Hall, D. (2008). A sociolinguistic study of the regional French of Normandy. Doctoral thesis: University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Hansen, A.B. (1998). Les voyelles nasales du français parisien moderne. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.Google Scholar
Hansen, A.B. (2001). Les changements actuels des voyelles nasales du français parisien: Confusions ou changement en chaîne?. La Linguistique, 37: 33–48.Google Scholar
Hornsby, D. (2006). Redefining regional French: Koinéization and Dialect Levelling in Northern France. Oxford: Legenda.Google Scholar
Hornsby, D. and Pooley, T. (2001). La sociolinguistique et les accents de français d'Europe. In: Hintze, M.-A., Pooley, T. and Judge, A. (eds), French Accents: Phonological and Sociolinguistic Perspectives. London: AFLS/CILT, pp. 305–343.Google Scholar
INSEE. (2012). Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques. <www.insee.fr> [accessed February 2012].+[accessed+February+2012].>Google Scholar
Johnson, D.E. (2009). Getting off the Goldvarb standard: Introducing Rbrul for mixed-effects variable rule analysis. Language and Linguistics Compass, 3.1: 359–383.Google Scholar
Kerswill, P. (2003). Dialect levelling and geographical diffusion in British English. In: Britain, D. and Cheshire, J. (eds), Social Dialectology. In Honour of Peter Trudgill. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 223–243.Google Scholar
Kuiper, L. (2005). Perception is reality: Parisian and Provençal perceptions of regional varieties of French. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 9.1: 28–52.Google Scholar
Labov, W., Ash, S. and Boberg, C. (2006). Atlas of North American English: Phonology and Sound Change. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (2007). Transmission and diffusion. Language, 83.2: 344–387.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (2014). The role of African Americans in Philadelphia sound change. Language Variation and Change, 26: 1–19.Google Scholar
Lennig, M. (1979). Une étude quantitative linguistique dans le système vocalique parisien. In: Thibault, P. (ed.), Le Français parlé – études sociolinguistiques. Edmonton: Linguistic Research Inc, pp. 29–39.Google Scholar
Léon, P.R. (1983). Dynamique des changements phonétiques dans le français de France et du Canada. La Linguistique, 19.1: 13–28.Google Scholar
Llamas, C., Watt, D. and Johnson, D.E. (2009). Linguistic accommodation and salience of national identity markers in a border town. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 28/4: 381–407.Google Scholar
Lobanov, B.M. (1971). Classification of Russian vowels spoken by different speakers. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 49: 606–608.Google Scholar
Lonchamp, F. (1979). Analyse acoustique des voyelles nasales françaises. Verbum: Revue de Linguistique, 2/9: 9–54.Google Scholar
Maeda, S. (1982). Acoustic correlates of vowel nasalization: A simulation study. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 72: S102.Google Scholar
Maeda, S. (1990). Compensatory articulation during speech: Evidence from the analysis and synthesis of vocal-tract shapes using an articulatory model. In: Hardcastle, W.J. and Marchal, A. (eds), Speech Production and Speech Modelling. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, pp. 131–149.Google Scholar
Maeda, S. (1993). Acoustics of vowel nasalization and articulatory shifts in French nasal vowels. In Huffman, M.K. and Krakow, R.A. (eds), Nasals, Nasalization, and the Velum. San Diego: Academic Press, pp. 147–170.Google Scholar
Malderez, I. (1991). Neutralisation des voyelles nasales chez les enfants d’Île-de-France. Actes du XIIe ICPhS, Aix-en-Provence, pp. 174–177.Google Scholar
Martinet, A. (1945). La prononciation du français contemporain: témoignages recueillis en 1941 dans un camp d'officiers prisonniers. Paris: Droz.Google Scholar
Martinet, A. (1958). C'est jeuli, le Mareuc! Romance Philology, 11: 345–355.Google Scholar
Mettas, O. (1973). Les réalisations vocaliques d'un sociolecte parisien. Travaux de l'Institut de phonétique de Strasbourg, 5: 1–11.Google Scholar
Milroy, L. (2007). Off the shelf or under the counter? On the social dynamics of sound changes. In: Cain, C.M. and Russom, G. (eds), Managing Chaos: Strategies for Identifying Change in English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 149–172.Google Scholar
Milroy, L. and Gordon, M. (2003). Sociolinguistics: Method and Interpretation. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Montagu, J. (2004). Les cibles articulatoires ‘sous-jacentes’ aux voyelles nasales en français parisien: indices perceptifs des changements. Actes des VIIèmes RJC ED268, 47–50.Google Scholar
Montagu, J. (2007). Analyse acoustique et perceptive des voyelles nasales et nasalisées du français parisien. Doctoral thesis, Université Paris III.Google Scholar
Mooney, D. (2014a). Linguistic transfer and dialect levelling: a sociophonetic analysis of contact in the regional French of Béarn. Doctoral thesis, University of Oxford.Google Scholar
Mooney, D. (2014b). Illustrations of the IPA: Béarnais (Gascon). Journal of the International Phonetic Association 44.3, 343–350.Google Scholar
Mooney, D. (forthcoming, 2016). Southern Regional French: A Linguistic Analysis of Language and Dialect Contact. Oxford: Legenda.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicholas, J., Fagyal, Z., Carignan, C. and Shosted, R. (forthcoming). Hear me out! The effects of age and dialect experience on the perception of phonemic nasal vowels in two dialects of French.Google Scholar
Patrick, P.L. (2002). The speech community. In: Chambers, J.K., Trudgill, P. and Schilling-Estes, N. (eds), The Handbook of Language Variation and Change. Oxford: Wiley, pp. 573–597.Google Scholar
Pooley, T. (1996). Ch'timi: the Urban Vernaculars of Northern France. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Pooley, T. (2006). On the geographical spread of oïl French in France. Journal of French Language Studies, 16.3: 357–390.Google Scholar
Pooley, T. (2007). Dialect levelling in southern France. Nottingham French Studies, 46.2: 40–63.Google Scholar
Ringe, D., Warnow, T., and Taylor, A. 2002. Indo-European and computational cladistics. Transactions of the Philological Society, 100, 59–129.Google Scholar
Stanford, J.N. and Kenny, L.A. (2013). Revisiting transmission and diffusion: An agent-based model of vowel chain shifts across large communities. Language Variation and Change, 25: 119–153.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, S.A. and Denis, D. (2014). Expanding the transmission/diffusion dichotomy: Evidence from Canada. Language, 90.1: 90–136.Google Scholar
Teston, B. and Demolin, D. (1997). Aspects dynamiques et articulatoires des voyelles nasales du français. Travaux de l'Institut Phonétique d'Aix, 18: 47–59.Google Scholar
Toulmin, M. (2009). From Linguistic to Sociolinguistic Reconstruction: The Kamta Historical Subgroup of Indo-Aryan. Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies.Google Scholar
Trudgill, P. (1986). Dialects in Contact. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Trudgill, P. (1996). Dialect typology: Isolation, social network and phonological structure. In: Guy, G., Feagin, C., and Baugh, J. (eds), Towards a Social Science of Language: Papers in Honor of William Labov. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 3–22.Google Scholar
Tuaillon, G. (1974). Compte-rendu de l'ALIFO. Revue de Linguistique Romane, 38: 576.Google Scholar
Tuaillon, G. (1988). Le français régional: formes de rencontre. In: Vermes, G. (ed.), Vingt-cinq communautés linguistiques de la France, I: Langues régionales et langues non territorialisées. Paris: L'Harmattan, pp. 291–300.Google Scholar
Walter, H. (1982). Enquête phonologique et variétés régionales du français. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar
Walter, H. (1994). Variétés actuelles des voyelles nasales du français, Diachronie et variation linguistique. In: Deyck, R.van (ed.), Communication and Cognition, 7.1/2: 223–236.Google Scholar
Wanner, A. (1993). Une enquête sociolinguistique comparative à Salses (Pyrénées Orientales) et Sigean (Aude). Lengas, 33: 7–124.Google Scholar
Woehrling, C. and Boula de Mareüil, P. (2006) Identification d'accents régionaux en français: perception et catégorisation. Bulletin PFC 6, 89–103.Google Scholar